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This morning, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the surgeon-turned entrepreneur that Forbes estimates is worth $10.1 billion, announced that his company and foundation are purchasing a cluster of DNA sequencers capable of sequencing a human genome for $1,000.

The purchase is part of a deal between Providence Health & Services, a not-for-profit Catholic hospitals system, and Soon-Shiong’s company, NantHealth, to provide DNA sequencing and other genetics-based services to all of the 22,000 patients diagnosed with cancer annually at the 34 hospitals Providence owns in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington. As part of the deal, Soon-Shiong will become the health care system’s new global director for cancer services and bioinformatics.

San Diego's , which has at least 80% share of the market for machines that decode genetics, introduced the new DNA sequencer in January as the first system to break the $1,000-per-human-genome barrier. The HiSeq X10 consists of 10 machines, each of which has a list price of $1 million; the system is only sold in groups of 10.

Other HiSeq X10 systems have been sold, including two to genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, who is using them to investigate the aging process. But the system purchased by Soon-Shiong will represent the first time one of these machines has been set up for clinical use.

Soon-Shiong says that he is adding them to computation technologies he has developed that make it possible to analyze tumor genomes quickly and easily. He claims that his company can analyze the data from a tumor sample in 47 seconds and transport in 18 seconds, which might someday make possible same day turnaround of genetic analysis -- although actually sequencing a genome on a HiSeq X10 takes several days. In this area, it would seem that the NantHealth, which has kept a low profile, may be competing with cancer genomics companies like Foundation Medicine, which is backed by Bill Gates and Ventures.

I’ve included a video of Soon-Shiong talking with me at last year’s Forbes Healthcare Summit about his plans for NantHealth.